Right-Wing Party Leader Declares ‘Hamas Must Be Destroyed,” Threatens to Quit Coalition if Not

Jerusalem, 4 October, 2025 (TPS-IL) — Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s Minister of National Security and leader of the right-wing Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Strength) Party in the Knesset, declared that his party would withdraw from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government should any Gaza peace deal allow the Hamas terrorist organization to continue to exist.

Netanyahu’s coalition would lose its majority in the Knesset without Otzma Yehudit.

“Alongside the goal of freeing the hostages, which is important in itself, the central goal of the war, which was determined by the massacre of the October 7 by the Hamas monsters, is that the Hamas terrorist organization cannot continue to exist,” he said, declaring that Hamas “must be destroyed.”

“Therefore, in light of recent developments, I and the Otzma Yehudit faction have clearly informed the Prime Minister: If, after the release of all the hostages, the terrorist organization Hamas remains in existence, Otzma Yehudit will no longer be part of the government,” added Ben-Gvir. “We will not be part of a national defeat that will be a global disgrace, and that will become a ticking bomb for the next massacre.”

Ben-Gvir went on to say that while “There is no doubt that we would be happy, like everyone else, to see all the abductees returned to us,” his party, however, cannot “in any way agree to a scenario in which the terrorist organization that inflicted the greatest disaster on the State of Israel would be reborn.”

“We will not be partners in this in any way,” he declared.